So, Google is in a bit of a tough spot, as other companies are climbing up its ivory tower. OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT has been making waves on the internet, and this has caused Google to develop “Bard”, its own AI chatbot. However, Google Bard made a pretty bad mistake, according to 9To5Google, and it’s having some repercussions.
The search giant earns a ton of money from being the defacto search option. A substantial chunk of the internet is powered by Google’s searching prowess, but times are changing. The company was already dealing with TikTok. It turns out that people are turning to TikTok to search for stuff. That means a lot, as a ton of people use TikTok. That’s eating into Google’s dominance- and its money.
Then, out of nowhere came ChatGPT. This company has already turned the internet on its ear with DALL-E and DALL-E 2. The company recently released it AI Chatbot, and it showed that it had a lot of potential as a Google alternative. So, what did Google do? It launched its own chatbot… but it didn’t go so well.
Google Bard had a pretty big mistake
Google unveiled Bard earlier this week in Paris. This was a whole event where it showed off some AI projects and services. This is the event where it introduced an interesting Lens feature.
But, the main takeaway from this event was the company’s slip-up with Bard. The company gave an example of its chatbot, where it was asked a pretty specific question. It was asked, “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9-year-old about?”
The bot gave three answers, but the last one is what stirred everything up. The bot issued this response: “JWST took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system. These distant worlds are called “exoplanets.” Exo means “from outside.” However, that’s not true. The first exoplanet was discovered in 2004, years before JWT even launched.
So, Google got two of the three questions right. That’s a D average, which is probably the grade our unfortunate 9-year-old got on their science report.
Google tried to assuage the situation by saying that this “highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we’re kicking off this week with our Trusted Tester program.” Regardless, the Google Bard mistake is having a negative effect on Google’s stocks.
According to a report from Bloomberg, Alphabet, the company that owns Google, has seen a 9% dip in its stock price. This brings it down to $98.40 per share, and it could dip even further.
In any case, Google is still going ahead with testing for Brad. It’s testing the chatbot outside of the States. We’ll have to see if Bard will be proper competition for ChatGPT.